“Darling, I am growing old, Silver threads among the gold
Shine upon my brow today, Life is fading fast away.”

“My Grandfather’s Clock was too large for the shelf
So it stood ninety years on the floor.”

HP Danks

Henry Clay Work

   These world-famous songs were written in the 1800’s by two men from Connecticut (the first by Hart Pease Danks, the second penned by Henry Clay Work) and are still sung today by barbershop quartets.
    New Haven was the birthplace, on April 6, 1834, of Danks who studied music with a Dr. Whiting and went on to compose over 1,000 songs and a few operettas. “Silver Threads” sold over 3,000,000 copies and should have made him a very wealthy man, but unfortunately he sold the rights for a small sum and died penniless in a Philadelphia boarding house at the age of sixty-nine. Apparently his last words were “It’s hard to die alone.” Little did he know that his song would live on.

   Henry Clay Work, born in Middletown on October 1,1832, was self-taught in music and composed many popular songs, but became known for “Marching Through Georgia” in 1865. An ardent abolitionist, Work celebrated the end of the Civil War with this song. It is said that his naming of the Grandfather Clock caught the imagination of many and it became the official name of any long-case clocks people might own. Work died in Hartford at the young age of fifty-one, leaving his wife, Sarah Parker Work and one surviving child.

Henry Clay Work Bust

Hart Pease Danks Gravestone